Christian Hudon wrote:
> In the ls manpage (and in its info manual too, I presume), option -f is 
> described as:
> 
>       -f     do not sort, enable -aU, disable -lst

That is true.  The question is what else does it do.

> However looking in the neighborhood of option -s, we see:
> 
>       -s, --size
>              print size of each file, in blocks
> 
>       -S     sort by file size
> 
> It'd be a good idea to take a look at the code to confirm, but given its 
> description, it'd make more sense if -f disabled option -S instead of 
> (or in addition to?) option -s.

It would be -S in addition to the -s option.  Looking at the code I
can also see that it disables --color and -1 too.

  static enum sort_type const sort_types[] =
  {
    sort_none, sort_time, sort_size, sort_extension, sort_version
  };
  ...
        case 'f':
          /* Same as enabling -a -U and disabling -l -s.  */
          ignore_mode = IGNORE_MINIMAL;
          sort_type = sort_none;
          sort_type_specified = true;
          /* disable -l */
          if (format == long_format)
            format = (isatty (STDOUT_FILENO) ? many_per_line : one_per_line);
          print_block_size = false;     /* disable -s */
          print_with_color = false;     /* disable --color */
          break;
  ...
        case 's':
          print_block_size = true;
          break;
  ...
        case 'S':
          sort_type = sort_size;
          sort_type_specified = true;
          break;

It may seem strange that this is documented as it is but the
documented behavior is required by POSIX.

  http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/ls.html

  -f
    Force each argument to be interpreted as a directory and list the
    name found in each slot.  This option shall turn off -l, -t, -s,
    and -r, and shall turn on -a; the order is the order in which
    entries appear in the directory.

It also has additional behavior too.

Bob


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